Thomas acknowledges "bitter calls for resignation"

Thursday, March 20, 2008

This year, politics and controversy have forced their way into Holy Week. For many members of the United Church of Christ these have been unwelcome guests, disturbing and alienating. My own Palm Sunday celebration in a wonderful renewing congregation in West Virginia felt wedged into a media storm that was relentlessly portraying our church in distorted and damaging ways. Response to my own reflections on these events ranged from deep gratitude to bitter calls for resignation. Interviews have disrupted schedules, and countless UCC folk have kept the phone ringing to offer help and to urge their own recipe for responding to all of this. The IRS inquiry lurks in the back corners of my mind and, like most of our pastors, various administrative challenges that can't be deferred demand attention, crowding out time set aside to ponder the mysteries of the Cross and the Empty Tomb.

This is classic Thomas portraying himself as a martyr. I guess this insulates him from criticism. Still, it's better than his 2003 Easter message when he stated that "photographs of soldiers receiving Holy Communion before going into battle make me more than a little uneasy."

posted by
UCCtruths, Thursday, March 20, 2008

4 Comments:

John Thomas might more accurately have said that "controversy has been invited into Holy Week" since he, alone, positions himself so.

UCCTruth's assessment is right on the mark: poor John is a self-authenticating martyr. He needs the healing prayer of churches he has embarrassed.

Where you pull this out of this homily is beyond me. Sure, I believe the UCC has made grievous errors of judgement. And, I am willing to make it known. Most basic that introspection should be on the table. But, deriding this piece in this way does no good. It only hardens postions. This message by JT is alot more personal and has a depth you don't seem to see. And, that is unfortunate. William

The Rationale

"If you believe love should be uncritical, you
may soon be thinking that I do not love this church. But my experience has been
that to be a member of the United Church of Christ is, almost by definition, to
be a critic of it. To be uncritical is to be the real oddball in this church.
Perhaps to be uncritical is to be un-Christian".

-From The United Church of Christ
Tomorrow, THEOLOGY AND IDENTITY: TRADITIONS, MOVEMENTS, AND POLITY IN THE
UCC (Pilgrim Press: 1990), edited by Dan Johnson